Temu and Shein are at least improved versions of Wish. Idk how both companies did it but my last few orders have gotten to me in 8 days. Amazon for me is taking like 3-5 days without Prime, so the speed difference is not as big as it used to be when ordering from China would be a 1-2 month wait with everything showing up in a different package.
I’ve seen them air ship my cheap crap from China to USA for “free.” I thought I read it was a national subsidy/strategy but can’t find article now. Maybe economic warfare? Can’t see how flying my $10 order of giant plastic balls is economic.
Note that the linked piece is just an opinion piece from a professional writer who doesn't actually know what he's talking about and appears to just be making things up. It may even be paid for by Temu.
Chinese shipping is cheap because the Chinese government subsidies it for exported goods, and because due to a postal treaty the U.S. government was forced to honor those rates for goods shipped to U.S. addresses. This treaty was renegotiated in 2019 (changes effective 2020) to make shipping costs several times more expensive for Chinese manufacturers, but those higher prices are still ridiculously cheap compared to the prices domestic manufacturers must pay so there is still a substantial arbitrage opportunity, which is basically what Temu is (in addition to being an I.P. theft play, but that's an entirely separate issue).
If it means something, I've occasionally seen orders from AliExpress (where you'd expect the goods to be 99% Chinese-made) where the customs declarations/shipping label lists an even lower GDP country as the nominal return address. I wonder if they literally route around the higher CN -> US shipping by doing, say China -> Tajikstan -> US?
I'm finding the shipping times are less terrible than they used to be-- often 2-3 weeks, with surprisingly good tracking. (The big black hole seems to be when the package arrives in Compton, and then usually spends a few days before being handed over to the USPS; I imagine they crack open a shipping container and re-wrap everyone's purchases for the last 1000km through a domestic carrier.
It's interesting that nobody's ever proposed a big fat USPS subsidy for domestic mail as a way to make American business more competitive. There are plenty of items (anything in the "small, unbranded, low-performance-needed hardware/accessories/toys" category) where the options are often "$2 + free shipping from Shenzhen in 2-3 weeks" or "$2 + $4.50 shipping in 3-4 days for a comparable item sold by a guy in Tacoma". I might be willing to pay $1 more for the convenience of having it sooner, but much more than that and I'll just compensate for slow delivery times by always having a project or two in the pipeline.
